Chapter Two: Had It Coming
What people didn’t understand about Ingrid was that she was only protecting her relationship. They didn’t understand that Tatiana’d had it coming. She had. And nobody understood that Ingrid wasn’t this terrible, mean person just because she’d hacked into some b-list celebrity’s phone. One who definitely had it coming.
Okay, fine. She wasn’t b-list. Tatiana Tiara was probably the hottest rising pop star on the planet. But that’s exactly why she had it coming! Coming into Ingrid’s work and flirting with every man she saw. Oh, she had to flirt with Nick didn’t she? And right in front of Ingrid. She was famous, gorgeous, and rich. That was why the self-absorbed diva thought she could have any man she wanted.
Ingrid had spent that entire week, giving the pop star dirty looks and making pointed comments about how she and Nick had been seeing each other for the past few months. What was she supposed to do when Tatiana kept flirting it up with him?
Hacking into Tatiana’s phone had been easy. Tatiana was such a ditz; she put her code into the phone with Ingrid right next to her. And of course, the dumb blonde forgot her phone constantly. The entire week she spent at Mattel, she was always leaving her phone in one room and wandering off to another.
Ingrid had just waited for her to absentmindedly leave it askew on the conference room table, and the second the diva was out of the room, Ingrid had the phone in her palm. Straight to instagram and she uploaded every single photo in the phone. There was one especially juicy one of a wart. A close-up photo of inflamed, bulbous skin. After posting all the photos, Ingrid had gone through her text messages. Oh and had there been a good one. A text to a friend, with the picture of the wart attached. Tatiana’s text message read, ‘Please tell me this isn’t herpes….does this look like herpes? It’s right next to my vag.’
There had been a moment, somewhere between snapping a screenshot and posting it to Tatiana’s twitter, when Ingrid felt a flicker of apprehension, a low sense of guilt kindling in her core. But her anger was greater than either of those other emotions. Attention-whore skank. Ingrid posted those private text messages to teach Tatiana a lesson. Women should have each other’s backs. They shouldn’t go around backstabbing each other and stealing each other’s guys. Tatiana was the type of selfish, awful woman who would throw another woman under the bus. Ingrid had told Tatiana that Nick was her boyfriend! Tatiana deserved it. Whatever happened.
She’d truly felt that way when she posted it exactly one year ago. And now she felt…well, she wasn’t sorry. She was only sorry that she’d been caught.
The angry mobs of twitter had descended on her. Youtubers had made countless videos about her, plastering her photo on their awful thumbnails. She was called a bad feminist, a misogynist, every awful name in the book. And of course, her prestigious job with Mattel had been lost. She used her position to hack into a celebrity’s phone and post private info. She wasn’t even put on a PIP. Fired immediately.
She supposed she’d known that would happen. A part of her always knew when she was about to blow her life up. She did it periodically: sabotaged everything good in her life. No matter how great things were, she always found a way to be unhappy.
While she’d always found a way to bounce back from her self-destructive meltdowns, this time she seemed to have really blown her life up for good. The damage felt beyond repair. She’d been out of work for over a year now. All of friends had abandoned her. She had exactly been close to any of them, yet still…Nick had dumped her. Tiffany was the only one who still came around and Ingrid suspected that she did it more to get gossip to bring back to the rest of their friend group than out of any actual desire to keep in contact with her.
Ingrid’s parents were fed up with her. She’d given up job searching. All it took was one google search and her application was thrown out the window. She’d had to delete all of her social media accounts. All she did now was lay unshowered in bed, inhaling ice cream and binging The Real Housewives. Her long days of unemployment had finally gotten her to test the waters of reality television and now she was hooked on it. Maybe she’d thrown away her amazing career and all that went with it, for nothing. She had nothing now.
Then the email came. She’d applied for the time travel experiment on a whim, because she didn’t know what else to do with herself.
She opened the email in a fog, her head heavy from having slept too long and her mouth stale from having gone too long without brushing.
She had to read the email twice before she truly understood it.
Smiling, she curled her toes into the fluffy pink carpet.
She fired off a text to Tiffany, not caring that Tiffany would run right to Snapchat to tell everyone else they knew.
‘I’m going to Boston next week. Speculative Science accepted me.’
And no, they hadn’t actually accepted her yet. They said they wanted to talk to her and conduct some screenings. But it wasn’t enough to say that. It wasn’t dramatic enough. She wanted all of her old friends to think of her again, and know that her life was once again exciting.
The reply from Tiffany appeared within seconds. ‘Congrats, girl! Hope they send you to the thirties. You’d look too cute in a flapper dress.’
Ingrid didn’t even bother to correct Tiffany, tell her that flappers were from the 20s.
She hummed a Pink song and showered for the first time all week.
It was all turning around for her.
If they chose her, she’d be leaving all of this behind.
She’d leave all of her mistakes behind.
